According to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education only one in three children are physically active every day with a staggering 12.5 million children classified as obese by the CDC. A major contributor to this apparent malaise is the daily dose of TV, computer and console-based entertainment beloved by children. Keeping kids entertained can be difficult at the best of times but there’s clearly no doubt that a child’s daily average of some seven and a half hours in front of a screen, in one form or another, should give parents pause for thought.

A new study released Thursday by the University of Southern California, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the RAND corp. states on average, Americans live about a year-and-a-half less than Western Europeans because of higher levels of obesity rates.